Emma started studying and practising web design in late 2006. However, the route she has taken to get to this point in time has been far from the normal design-based conventional route. This page gives an outline of her skills and how she has come to working in web design and development.
Emma has worked in statistical database analysis for the past 10 years after graduating from UMIST (now known as University of Manchester) with a BSc(Hons) in Mathematics, Statistic and Operational Reseach (she got a 2(i) if you are interested!). This has led her to work on building scorecards, segmentations, designing trials and building business models for forecasting. She also remains a member of the Operational Research Society.
Her first role in e-commerce was in 2002, as a Performance Analysis Manager for Littlewoods (now known as Shop Direct Group), which first gave her the web 'bug'. She threw herself into learning all about the 'behind-the-scenes' aspects of the internet, and loved the fact she worked in a fast-paced environment.
She worked on the three main websites for 18 months - she provided management information on the websites (visitors, orders and sales), worked on analytics (such as product affinity, clickstream data & conversion to order) and did further work with her old team to set up tests and trials about what communications worked better for online customers.
Emma has always had an interest in computing and IT. Her father was an IT teacher from the late 70s (or simply "Computing" as it was known then). Her father's job meant that she got to "play" on many machines from a young age (on such classics as the ZX81, the "Apple II" and the BBC Micro to name a few).
As good fortune would have it, she is also a talented artist, which was one of the interests she carried through to A Level at school. Some of her happiest memories were from the sixth form years, where each student had their own studio to work in. She loved Picasso, Dali and El Greco, and one of her proudest moments was completing a 4ft square canvas inspired by these artists.
It is this combination of interests and experiences that have led her to a path in web design and development. She is still with Shop Direct and recently moved formally into IT as a systems designer/developer. She tends to design websites in xhtml/css although can program in Flash and ActionScript also. Her most recent website work was My Holiday In Turkey, a website to advertise a holiday rental home.
If you have a project that you would like Emma to work on, please contact her via contact pages.
© Emma Swift 2007-2009